After the drama of special sessions, questionable remarks from Rick Perry, an 11-hour filibuster and a lot of shudder-inducing coat hangers, Texas is poised to pass a law this week restricting abortion. Sunday, Perry promised restrictions within the next 10 days stating, “We’re going to pass some restrictions on abortion in Texas so that Texas is a place where we defend life. That’s the powerful message here, that’s what we’re focused on.”  The law in question would prevent abortions after twenty weeks based on the contested idea that the fetus can feel pain after this time (a fetus is considered viable at around 20-22 weeks anyway). Significantly, the law would also require abortion clinics to meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical center, which would require facilities to revamp or close altogether.

While I am tempted to write off these restrictions as a victory for the pro-life movement, smile and move about my week, the debate has only reminded me that the way our country views and argues about abortion is fundamentally wrong. Not “wrong” as in morally reprehensible, but actually incorrect and unproductive. And this new Texas law proves that – by sharpening the divide between those arguing for a woman’s right to care and those advocating for the rights of the unborn when actually, those interested in protecting safe and supportive healthcare environments for women should be pro-life and those who are interested in the rights of the unborn should be arguing for more supportive healthcare environments for women.

I want to grab the woman with her grossly inappropriate sign featuring a uterus or a coat hanger and the woman with her rosary beads and dead-baby pictures, shake them both and yell, “You are actually on the same side!”

This is because when women are actually supported- that is, given all their “rights”- the need for abortion is greatly reduced, which is exactly why the Texas law (and other abortion-restriction laws) is striking at the problem from the wrong angle. These laws shut down women’s healthcare facilities that do more than provide abortions; they also provide cancer and STD screenings, many to women that can’t afford healthcare otherwise. When women don’t have access to good healthcare, when they don’t have access to counseling services, when they don’t feel supported, when they don’t feel like they can maintain their education or career with a baby- that’s when they get abortions. A woman should not have to be desperate to kill her baby in order to survive and women should never have to choose between motherhood and a professional career. You support the woman – you save the fetus.

This nuance in the abortion debate has also been made apparent by new research being done to support abortion that is completely misdirected. I was shocked to read this article, about a new study, called the “turn away study”, which seeks to prove that women who are denied late term abortions are worse off. Basically insinuating that abortion can be viewed as a social good and that denying it to women is a crime. The article focuses on a woman in the Bay Area (where I live) that visits multiple clinics in search of a late-term abortion and is turned away causing her to carry the baby to term. The article argues that both the mother and child involved in an unwanted pregnancy are worse off than if the mother had aborted the baby.

So basically, a disadvantaged woman is pregnant and instead of desperately searching for a way to provide her with prenatal care, counseling and childcare, we are scrambling for a way to kill her baby. Doesn’t that seem backwards? Doesn’t that seem repressive to women? Through studies like these, we are telling women that society cannot support them as mothers, that their children are burdens (and will be worse off) and that abortion is their only option. Just read this excerpt explaining the results of a Czech study that serves as the only precedent to the current one, which is due to conclude in 2015:

The first results examined the children at age 9. David reported that the children born of unwanted pregnancies had significant disadvantages. They were breast-fed for shorter periods; were slightly but consistently overweight; had more instances of acute illness and lower grades in Czech. They seemed less capable in socially demanding situations; they were less popular among peers and teachers and even, if sons, with their own mothers. David concluded that “the child of a woman denied abortion appears to be born into a potentially handicapping situation.” After David published his first round of data, Czechoslovakia made first-trimester abortion available on demand.

Personally, I think we’re all born into “potentially handicapping situations” and this research that attempts to show that children born from unwanted or unplanned pregnancies are particularly disadvantaged should disgust our country. Buying into claims like these is a slippery slope for the U.S.

The United States should be somewhere that seeks to protect life, but not by shutting doors of facilities for women. Abortion is a symptom of society’s inability to provide women with the services they need when they are pregnant and mothers. Instead, we should focus our energy on supporting pregnancy crisis centers that don’t provide abortions in order to create safe healthcare facilities for women. Anyone who argues that abortion clinics are safe places are kidding themselves. Just explore Live Nation, which uses undercover women to expose everything from coercion to the covering up of sex trafficking in abortion clinics across the country.

When it comes down to it, abortion is a women’s rights issue. But NOT in terms of a woman’s right to an abortion. Women deserve quality care and so do their unborn children; this can’t be found in an abortion clinic.